


Unexpected Company

by OrbitalMike



Category: Eureka (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Artificial Intelligence, F/M, Helicopters, Law Enforcement, Original Character(s), Other, Pregnancy, Radioastronomy, Special Air Service, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:49:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22865848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrbitalMike/pseuds/OrbitalMike
Summary: Jack Carter and Jo Lupo try to navigate the fallout when a night at the bar, that turns into a one-night stand, turns into more. But after a few weeks, in the midst of a critical experiment in high orbit, the Sheriff and the director of GD Security realize they've gotten a whole lot more than they bargained for. And that's all before the phone rings.
Relationships: Allison Blake/Nathan Stark, Jack Carter/Jo Lupo, Jack Carter/Jo Lupo/Tess Fontana, Jack Carter/Tess Fontana/S.A.R.A.H., Zoe Carter/Zane Donovan
Comments: 9
Kudos: 16





	1. The New Not-Normal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A frustrated and lonely night at the bar brings Jack and Jo together, Project Trebuchet gets off the ground, and a whole lot of unexpected news arrives.

"Good morning, Sheriff Carter."

_Oh, God._

Jack blinked, fighting his way out of the fog. He could feel the contours of the previous night's drinking by the rising pain in his forehead and the sandpaper in his mouth. It had started off with beer. That was for sure. Allison and Nathan were off on their second honeymoon, and Zane was off on the East Coast; he hadn't chosen to share any more specifics than that. Jo had angrily suspected Zane might have found his way to Boston and to Zoe's apartment; Jack couldn't even bear thinking about it. And so they'd wound up at Cafe Diem, both intent on drowning their feelings. It had progressed from local Eureka microbrews to whiskey. Vincent had raised his eyebrows but kept the drinks coming anyway. Things had gotten more intense, and he and Lupo had taken a self-driving car back to his place, ostensibly for more...drinks...

"Will Ms. Lupo be joining us for breakfast today?" 

_Oh, God help me._

Jack rolled over slowly. He had slept under a napkin-sized portion of the bedsheet; the rest was twisted and wrapped up around the other figure at his side. All he could see was a tangle of black hair, and a sliver of her bare shoulderblade. Images briefly flickered from the twilight of the night before. Pouring more bourbon in the kitchen. Telling S.A.R.A.H. to disable her cameras and give them privacy. Jo, teetering on her heeled boots, trying to be sexy while peeling her jeans off but tipsily falling right back onto the couch. A halfhearted "maybe we shouldn't" talk that didn't even make it to the end of a sentence. The kiss on the couch; Jack following her up the stairs, admiring her backside in some decidedly non-military-issue panties; landing in his bed, clothes flying, fingernails digging in, no tenderness, just need, feeling like a dam had broken between them. 

"Jo," he murmured. 

"I'm not here, Carter," came the reply from beneath the covers. "I'm home, in my house, which is a normal house above-ground, and I am alone, and I am sober. I am certainly not in the DMZ between still-drunk and miserably hung over."

He didn't dare touch her, although he wanted to, desperately. He laughed a little. "Well, for being across town, your voice really carries." 

"Ms. Lupo, I've taken the liberty of accessing your calendar. It is 7:41am, and you are both scheduled for an 8:00am meeting with Deputy Director Fargo to discuss the security preparations for Project Trebuchet. Would you like me to cancel the meeting?" 

Jo went rocketing out of bed, and proceeded to tear around Jack's bedroom, collecting her clothes in some sort of frantic scavenger hunt. Jack propped himself up on his elbows, watching through half-open eyes, unable to help himself from laughing despite his misery. He forced himself out of bed and into the bathroom, cursing and occasional bumps and thuds still audible. 

When Jack returned, teeth brushed and a half-bottle of Advil inhaled, Jo was standing before him, wearing only skinny jeans and her bra. "My top smells like Wild Turkey," she declared, her eyes boring into his. "I can't wear that to a meeting. Even Fargo's not that oblivious." 

Jack raised his hands defensively. "Don't look at me! I was drinking Maker's Mark!" 

They rode together to Global Dynamics. Jack said little; Jo repeated the same points over and over again. The previous night had not happened. Jack had picked her up on the way to work because her car's hydrogen drive had broken down. And she was wearing a U.S. Marshals Service CITP academy t-shirt because she had spilled Vinspresso on what was certainly a work-appropriate top on their drive in, and Jack just happened to have a clean shirt free in his gym bag. 

It would have been easier to stick with that cover story if anyone had bothered to question them on it, but no one did. They arrived at the meeting at the same time. Jack's close-cropped hair still looked a bit disheveled; Jo's jeans weren't a regular sight at the GD offices. It struck Jack that Jo hardly ever wore perfume, but he could smell it now sitting next to her. _She must have put it on before she met me last night_. This realization shot through him, and he smiled, broadly, involuntarily. 

"....is going to require synchronized ground stations across the globe once the sail deploys and the orbital accelerator...Sheriff Carter, did I say something amusing?" Fargo was staring in confusion at Carter as he grinned like an idiot. Rather than sounding angry, Fargo seemed genuinely uncertain.

"No, no, Fargo, I was just...." Jack could see Jo glaring daggers at him out of the corner of his eye. "Just wondering if you were looking for volunteers to provide security at the Canary Islands downlink site. I hear there are great beaches there." 

Fargo rolled his eyes, exasperated, and pushed up his glasses. "No, Sheriff, we're going to need you and Deputy Andy here in Eureka, making sure that the EM field remains secure around Eureka throughout the launch. This is going to be the most ambitious space probe launch in human history. A GD satellite in orbit, with a miniaturized particle accelerator, will try to create a stable wormhole to a nearby star system, one that might even harbor life. And once we send a probe through, we'll hopefully have a few moments of real-time telemetry, giving us our first up-close look at an alien planet.

"It's politically controversial, it's hugely complex, and it's insanely expensive. The cost of the space-based particle accelerator alone was equivalent to half of DOD's budget. And it's the first international civilian cooperative mission that Eureka has led; through some elaborate cover stories, shell companies, and even a bribe or two, we've finally found a way to share our expertise without compromising national security. If it succeeds, it could be the most important scientific mission in human history. If it fails, we could risk Eureka being exposed- or shut down." 

All the talk of cover stories and exposure was making Jack's mind wander again. 

As they left Fargo's office, Jo pulled Jack into an alcove by his shirt. "Hey!" she hissed. "You have to pull it together. Remember. Last night did **not** happen." 

Jack exhaled. "Okay. It didn't happen." He looked down momentarily before meeting her eyes. "Does that mean it'll never happen again?"

There was a long pause. Jo released his shirt and looked away, smoothing a stray hair behind her ear. "Like I said. It didn't happen."

The next time it happened was at GD, two weeks later. Jo had a long list of equipment, vehicles, and VIP requirements that would have to be accommodated on the day of the Project Trebuchet launch. They had two Senators, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, NASA's administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, and a couple of folks from the "intelligence community" who weren't all that keen on sharing their travel arrangements until day-of. Jo and Jack were sitting in her office, late in the evening, alone with her flag and her hidden guns and her framed medals from the 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. 

A few things were unspoken between them, at this point. Zoe had posted an Instagram photo of her having brunch with her friends in Somerville, and had made no effort to hide the fact that she was seated next to Zane Donovan. Seated rather close to him, in fact. Jo had to have seen it by now. Also unspoken was their shared awareness of the rumors surrounding their fling. No one would say anything directly, but when Jo had walked past the Cafe Diem window to her car a few days earlier, Fargo had elbowed Jack in the ribs and grinned silently. Vincent had done nothing but smile, which was wildly uncharacteristic of him. And despite Jo's stoic refusal to discuss or even acknowledge their hookup, they'd found more and more excuses to text one another more and more often. 

Jack was standing over Jo's shoulder as she stared at her bank of 3-D computer displays, reviewing map overlay after overlay; traffic projections, checkpoint locations, drone coverage, auxiliary EM field generators, everything. It was like freaking high school, he reflected to himself; just hoping to be close to her, for some excuse, anything. 

Jo squeezed her eyes shut and shut off the displays with a hand motion, leaning her head back. "I'm tired of this. I don't want to do it anymore," she groaned. When she slowly opened them, Jack, standing to her side, leaned down, brushing his nose against hers softly. She didn't pull away. 

"As a matter of fact, neither do I," Jack said, and kissed her. 

This time, they did it in the holding cell. There was no booze, and no hurry. Jack was intentionally slow, ignoring Jo's whispered pleas for more, harder, faster. Jack went down on her, and when she came, Jo seemed to bottle up all the energy it took to stay silent, releasing it through squirming, twisting, gasping. She clamped her thighs against him so tightly that he silently wondered if Jo could just maybe, perhaps, skip leg day at the gym, once in a damn while. Then it was missionary style, on top of a hastily-assembled pile of their clothes so Jo's back didn't freeze on the polished concrete floor of the cell. 

There wasn't any real cuddling after; it was too cold, so they put their clothes on quickly. But Jo climbed into Jack's lap and wrapped her arms around his neck as they sat at her desk. Her chin rested on his shoulderblade, both staring off in opposite directions with their thoughts. 

True to form, Jack broke the silence. "So did that...you know...happen?"

He couldn't see her face, but he thought he could hear Jo smile. "Might have." She inched closer to him, and her grip around him tightened. 

The first night Jo spent at Jack's place, she arrived with a long, black plastic Pelican case. It was built to carry a sniper rifle, almost four feet long, and heavily padded. When Jo arrived at the door, Jack stood there, enthusiasm balanced with sheer confusion. "I thought I was gonna cook," he said. "Are we going shooting? You know you'll embarrass me, although maybe that's the point." 

Jo said nothing, but smiled a little and set the case down on the floor. The lights in the walls flickered a little; it was clear S.A.R.A.H. was watching and interested. But when the Pelican case popped open, Jack could see that it was mostly empty. Inside was an overnight bag and a toiletry kit. It slowly dawned on Jack that Jo arriving at his house with what appeared to be heavy weaponry, was going to look a lot less suspicious than bringing luggage, a toothbrush, and her jammies. He smiled at her ingenuity, closed the door, and poured her a glass of wine, savoring the anticipation of learning what, exactly, Lupo's jammies looked like. 

The sheriff was not disappointed. 

The morning of Project Trebuchet began well before dawn for both of them. They had spent the night at Lupo's house, closer to town, and had given up on trying to explain why Jack's marked cruiser would be parked in her driveway overnight. They chose to let others draw the obvious conclusion (without doing anyone the favor of confirming it.) Jo headed to the Global Dynamics operations center at GD headquarters, and Jack set up at the massive mobile command post down by the Archimedes fountain. Vincent was doling out extra-strength Vinspresso before the sun came up, and the bunting on the VIP viewing stand had just been secured into place when Jack bumped into a bleary-eyed Fargo. 

"Fargo, remind me exactly what we're going to see here at 9:30am?" Carter asked, sipping his coffee. 

Fargo grinned, despite obvious exhaustion. "You're going to see the dawn of humanity becoming an interstellar civilization!" he replied with glee. "Once the Trebuchet satellite unfurls its solar sail, which is the size of ten city blocks, it'll kick-start the onboard ion drive, and the satellite will start to orbit the Earth at an extremely high rate of speed. Once it reaches perigee, it'll use that inertial energy to power up the particle accelerator, and we should get a stable wormhole, if everything goes right!" 

Carter motioned for Fargo to go on, hoping the diminutive genius might reach something approximating an answer. But Fargo plowed ahead with the science stuff. "Of course, the Earth is rotating a thousand miles an hour, and the Trebuchet satellite will fire the particle accelerator while moving at 21,000mph, so we can't be completely sure where it will be in relation to the ground. That's why we've got scientists in Australia, the Canary Islands, and here in Eureka, all watching the skies at the same time, so even if we just get a brief transmission from the far side of that wormhole, we'll catch it!"

Carter nodded slowly and repeated his question. "Right, and so here, on the ground, in Eureka, we'll see...what, exactly?"

Fargo shrugged. "With our bare eyes? Probably nothing. But it's so exciting!" 

Carter stared blankly as Fargo scurried off. "Great." 

With a half-hour to go, Carter had been running from one minor emergency to the next. The Senator's limousine had broken down off Pythagoras Road, and Henry had peeled away from the astrophysics station at the command post to help fix it. As the VIP seating filled with suits and uniforms, Jack's phone buzzed. It was a text from Jo. 

_You need to meet me right now._

Jack blinked. Something had to have gone wrong at GD, something she wasn't willing to put out over a text. His stomach sank. Those idiots had probably punched a hole in the space-time continuum while trying to brew coffee this morning, or unleashed a T-rex from cold storage. 

_Okay_ , he replied. _Where?  
_

 _Henry's. It's halfway_. 

Jack jumped in the Jeep and turned the lights on, laying rubber down Main Street toward Henry's Garage. Just another day in Eureka. When he arrived, Jo's black Suburban was pulled around back of the garage, and she was standing there, pale, appearing to shiver. But it was a gentle spring day, nearly 70 degrees, and not even approaching cold. He had never seen her like this. Carter threw it into park and leapt out. 

"Jo, what's wrong?" He closed the distance between the two of them in only a few steps, putting his arms around her. She didn't return the hug, but she didn't pull away, either. Jo was hyperventilating, seeming to stare blankly at the faded red wall of the garage. 

"I'm late," she said quietly. 

Carter pulled back, his hands on her elbows. He was still in tight-schedule mode, still thinking of the orbital test, still thinking of the VIPs and Fargo and whether or not the space doohickey was gonna do the thing or not. "Late for what?" 

She simply stared at him. Her eyes were brimming. 

" **Oh**." Jack exhaled. "You mean...."

Jo nodded slowly. "Took a pregnancy test a few minutes ago because I was tired of worrying. Turned blue. Tried another one." She shrugged and finally met his eyes. "Blue, too." 

Jack ran his hand over his head in pure disbelief. "It can't...no. I mean, we were careful! We used...I mean, we used protection. Right?" 

Jo slowly shook her head. Her voice was small. "Not the first night."

They stood in silence for a long moment, long enough to listen to the shriek of a nearby kestrel, the wind in the trees around them, the hum of distant traffic. Jack's phone buzzed, and buzzed again. Jack could see Jo's phone screen, lighting up through the fabric of her suit jacket. _It must be 9:30am_ , he thought. _I don't care._

"Jo," he said quietly. It felt as though a year had passed in that silence. "I'm here." He gazed at her. "What do you want to do?" 

She gave him a slight, momentary, crooked smile, and then the tears came. She buried herself in his arms, turning the tan fabric of his uniform deep brown with salty rivulets coursing down. He held her as she wept, and his stomach sank a little bit. Everything was spinning. The normalcy of the birds and trees and traffic seemed obscene. 

"I didn't want a relationship," she sobbed, wiping her runny nose with her sleeve and peeling herself away. "I've been looking at jobs in D.C., maybe contracting overseas. I'm not gonna stay in this town forever, especially after Zane and...I definitely wasn't ready to go settle down, I just..." She sniffled again and forced herself to slow down her breathing, before taking his hand. Jack felt seasick.

"But I don't know how many more chances life's gonna give me to be a mom," she said, almost in a whisper. "I've always wanted it, I just didn't...I mean, hell, that's as bad as Josephina Ballerina," she remarked with a little smile. After another silence, she slowly drew close to him, murmuring, "You're a good man. And I already know you make a great dad." She looked up into Jack's eyes. "I'm having this baby," she said, her voice soft but determined. "The question is, what do you think?"

He leaned in to kiss her fiercely.

"Okay," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "Yes." 

They both hurried back to their assignments. Jack felt like he was floating, like he was drunk or dizzy or dreaming. Zoe would lose her mind, no doubt. The awkwardness with Zane. The professional nightmare. People didn't even know they were dating...! _Okay, come on, they know, Jack._

"Sheriff?" The squawk of the radio jolted him out of his reverie. "It's Deputy Andy. Just making sure you saw our messages, and the calls from Deputy Director Fargo, and the alert from the DOD..."

Jack froze for a moment, and then stepped on the accelerator. "Sorry, buddy, I was in the middle of something kinda important. What did I miss?"

"Well, Sheriff, the Trebuchet satellite fired its accelerator somewhere over Australia, and it looks like it was successful at creating the wormhole, although it closed before the probe could get through." 

"Rats," Jack said, barely paying attention. "I'm sure we'll get 'em next time there." Or whatever. If the Trebuchet satellite had opened a wormhole to a dimension full of cold beer and burritos, he wouldn't have cared.

"Sheriff, the reason we've been trying to call you is, ahh..." Andy coughed, which was odd for an android. "We got a call from the ground station in Australia at the Parkes Observatory, the one linked to the Trebuchet satellite at the time the wormhole opened. There was some kind of power surge there, and...well, a young woman kind of...appeared, I guess. She gave her name as Dr. Tess Fontana, but nobody has any record of her." 

At this point, Carter had made it to the command post. He stepped out of the Jeep as Andy approached him on foot. 

"So, Andy, how does some physicist appearing at a giant radiotelescope in Australian sheep country relate to us?"

Andy gave an awkward smile and put his hands into his uniform pockets. 

"I'm not really sure how to tell you this, Chief, but she says she works here in Eureka. And that she's your wife."


	2. The Bat and the Cat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack, Fargo, Jo, and Henry arrive in Australia, where Aussie and American forces have locked down the Parkes radio telescope around the mysterious redhead who knows all their secrets- and who seemed to arrive out of nowhere.

It was insultingly bright outside the helicopter window as the low hills of New South Wales sped by. Jack hadn't slept a wink on the flight from Eureka to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, and then from there on to Sydney. The sleeping experience was particularly brutal aboard an Air Force C-17 Globemaster cargo jet. It had been rigged with seats all along the fuselage, but that left them staring at pallets of electronic equipment for the entirety of the 19-hour flight. Henry had smiled and shook his head when he got the report from the Parkes Observatory in Australia, and simply said, "I'll pack a bag." Fargo had snapped an eye mask onto his face and promptly fallen asleep. 

Others had fared better on the flight. Jo had been sitting next to Jack when they took off from a small Air Force base near Eureka. They'd held hands for a few minutes, ignoring Henry's bemused smile, until Jo had gotten up and retrieved a tangled mess of webbing from her pack. With practiced ease, she rigged it between a tied-down cargo pallet and a metal bracket in the bulkhead. Before Jack knew it, Jo had herself a hammock, into which she had climbed and remained, comfortably, for the rest of the trip. 

Jo had been apoplectic when he first relayed the news of the Parkes telescope incident, and Dr. Fontana's claim to be Jack's wife. But her fury turned to guarded curiosity when Jack told her how none of the government agencies, schools, or contacts Fontana referenced, had any record of her existence. That same curiosity had turned to worry when she learned that Fontana appeared to have intimate knowledge of highly-classified projects within Eureka, Area 51, DARPA, and other shadowy corners of the government. 

When they reached Sydney, a pair of U.S. Army helicopters were waiting for them. Jo recognized them immediately, and said so- MH-60M Blackhawks from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, or SOAR, the SEAL Team 6 of the U.S. military's rotary wing forces. The former Sergeant First Class Lupo smiled as though she had just encountered an old friend. The aircraft were covered in unusual bumps, bulges, antennae, and aftermarket modifications, the hallmarks of tightly-classified missions and sky-high budgets. The pilots wore camo, not flight suits, and Lupo fist-bumped one of them as they approached. "Chief," she said with a nod. "Long time!" 

Jo had been in her element, while Jack was barely hanging on as he climbed aboard the Blackhawk, strapping himself into yet another uncomfortable military aircraft seat. They could have flown commercial, conceivably, but the government, in its wisdom, had decided to ship the Eureka contingent over with the larger force of U.S. military and intelligence types, all of whom were extremely interested in finding out who this woman was, how she got there, and how she had the keys to the military-industrial castle. And, it went without saying, whose side she might be on. 

Henry tapped Jack on the arm and pointed to the headphones hanging from brackets in the helicopter's ceiling. Jack dutifully donned his, and the noise-canceling intercom system allowed him to speak with Henry over the inescapable, piercing whine of the Blackhawk's engine. "I've been looking at the initial reports from the scene," Henry said, still raising his voice a little despite the intercom. "I think I've got something of a working theory. The Trebuchet satellite, when it activated its particle accelerator, it was linked to the Parkes Observatory ground station. So instead of setting up that wormhole in geostationary orbit, like we'd all planned, maybe it fired the accelerator right back down at the ground station- and created it here." 

Jack frowned. "But why would the orbiting wormhole machine thingie create some strange woman who says she's my wife? I thought it was supposed to take some space probe to another galaxy or something!"

Henry laughed and shook his head. "Just to another star system. Tau Ceti, actually. But a wormhole is technically called an Einstein-Podolsky-Grant Bridge, and they're not just capable of moving us through space and time. They can- at least in theory- open doors to other parts of the multiverse." Jack stared, and Henry waved his hands. "Alternate universes, Jack. Given certain circumstances, a stable wormhole could move people from one timeline to another, from one universe to another." Henry shook his head. "So for a brief moment, a door was opened between her universe and ours."

Jack slumped, his head resting on the Plexiglass window as the greenery of New South Wales zipped by. These 160th pilots seemed to love flying murderously fast, and impossibly close to the ground. Jack wondered if they would be picking tree branches out of the landing gear whenever they arrived. On the other side of the helicopter's cabin, Jo and Fargo kept sleeping.

A small tent city had sprung up on the grounds of the Parkes Observatory, out in the midst of the New South Wales countryside. Two Royal Australian Air Force AW139 helicopters were already on the ground with their rotors running. The two American helicopters set down beside them, and a guy in a polo shirt with a sidearm, a beard, and Oakley sunglasses was waiting to usher Jack and the rest into a nearby tent. "Welcome to 'Straya!" he said. "Sorry your visit's taken ya back of Bourke. Tom McKenna, I'm one of the blades they hauled in for this mess."

Henry, Jack, Jo and Fargo clambered out of the helicopter, rotors still turning and turbines still screaming. "I don't get it!" Fargo yelled over the sound of the aircraft as they hustled across the grass towards the tent complex. "Why all the special forces types and military stuff? This is the first recorded incidence of a human subject crossing an EPG bridge from an alternate timeline! Isn't this more of a scientific mission?"

Henry looked back over his shoulder and shook his head. "Second incidence, Fargo! You're forgetting our little trip back from 1947, which officially never happened. And it still would be, if the research subject weren't spouting off a whole bunch of information that's classified Top Secret-SCI! In a foreign country, at an unsecured civilian facility, no less. Social media's already exploding; people think that there's been some kind of SETI signal or alien landing."

They passed more guys in various shades of camouflage, carrying all different varieties of rifles. Jack noticed rivers of power cords and communications cables winding from one tent to another. Some of the tent materials had a metallic shimmer; signal-blocking, for secure communications and classified information, Jack guessed. McKenna, the Aussie commando, zipped the tent flap behind them as they entered the modular structure. "Alien landing? Gee, I wonder how they would have gotten that idea," Lupo muttered. 

General Mansfield, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was waiting for them inside the tent. Lupo stiffened up, and Fargo blanched. "The gang's all here," Mansfield remarked icily, before looking back to a group of clustered scientists and military personnel. Some of the scientists wore the trademark silver triangle of Global Dynamics. The focus of attention in the windowless, air-conditioned tent was a three-screen wall of televisions. One rotated between local and international news channels; another was registering satellite and electronic surveillance of the Parkes Observatory site. The third was just different angles of a holding cell- spare, but not uncomfortable- with a bed, a desk, a few chairs, a fridge, and a pretty redhead in her 30s, wearing jeans and a buttondown. 

"We have a young woman here who identifies herself as Dr. Tess Fontana," General Mansfield said, without any pleasantries. "She says that she is on temporary assignment to the Parkes Observatory as the acting director, detailed from the Global Dynamics astrodynamics division, and has been so for the last six months. This has come to the great surprise of Dr. Jennifer Tranh, the actual director of the observatory for the last five years, not to mention the Eureka astrodynamics division, which has no record of Dr. Fontana whatsoever.

"Dr. Fontana has made mention of a number of sensitive compartmented programs at Eureka, including weapons systems currently in field testing, certain orbital platforms, and sensitive experimental projects that are not acknowledged outside of very small rooms. Although there is certainly the strong possibility that her appearance is linked to the Project Trebuchet test, we cannot rule out a major breach of operational security, either intentional or unintentional." Mansfield gestured around the tent. "Hence the welcome wagon.

"Dr. Fargo, you and Dr. Deacon will be responsible for getting to the bottom of this supposed wormhole, or Einstein bridge, or whatever you call it. If it truly did happen, I need to know that it's not about to happen again- and that there aren't other uninvited guests who will be popping up elsewhere. Lupo, I want you to audit every single program, code-word, and research project Fontana has mentioned. Validate access lists. Check schedules. Review background checks and clearance evaluations. If this turns out to be some kind of elaborate counterintelligence fishing operation, I don't want us handing the Russians or the Chinese the keys to the castle because we think we've got some visitor from the great goddamned beyond."

Mansfield turned and looked at Carter. "And you, Sheriff. Your responsibility will be to interview Fontana."

Carter groaned audibly, and Jo's lips pursed. "General, there are plenty of other qualified people who are-" 

Mansfield cut him off. "Don't mistake this for a discussion, Carter. You will use whatever leverage you've got to assess this person's credibility, state of mind, and security threat level. If she truly thinks you're her husband, you will use that to your advantage." Mansfield looked among the four of them. "Do I make myself clear?" 

Jack found Jo out by the helipad, watching one of the Australian helicopters take off into the setting sun. She noticed his arrival, apparently, but didn't turn around. "You know I smoked in Afghanistan?" she said, by way of greeting. "Gross habit. My brothers and my dad would have hated it. But everyone else did it, and it's not like we could go to the bar at the end of a long day. Took me a while to quit before I got back." She shook her head. "Terrible habit, but I miss it in moments like these." 

Jack put his hand on her lower back cautiously. "Jo, I don't...."

She stepped away, a short distancing but a noticeable one. "Don't ask me to be okay with this," she said, sharp but quiet. "I don't know if I want a relationship with you, or with anyone. I wasn't asking your permission to bring this kid into the world; I just wanted to know you'd be in my life, and her life." Jack's eyes widened at the gendering, but Jo smiled briefly. "I can hope for a girl." She looked back at the helicopter as it went lumbering east. "But just when I think I stand a chance of finally having some kind of...stability..." Jo's eyes were glistening, but her jaw was tense. 

Jack nodded in silence. His thoughts turned to his divorce from Abby, Zoe's turn through juvenile delinquency through her time in Eureka until early admission to Harvard, a seemingly star-crossed relationship with Allison, Jo's brief but intense fling with Zane. They deserved something good. Something together. 

"I gotta go, Jojo," he finally said, turning to head towards the center of the tent complex. "I'm supposed to start the interview in ten minutes. I'd be happier knowing that you were watching," he offered, "but I get it if you won't."

She looked back over her shoulder. "I'll be there, Carter."

McKenna accompanied Carter into the inner sanctum, a metallic gray tent where Fontana was waiting. "No weapons, right, mate?" he asked, cautiously. Jack shook his head; he was down to just his jeans and an old Marshals Service hooded sweatshirt. It was strange, being in a foreign country- being without his sidearm was unusual. Even in Eureka, if he were out of the house, he would be armed, even a trip to the grocery store. 

"She goes all right, honestly," McKenna added. Jack responded with a quizzical look, and McKenna smiled. "Sorry, mate. Aussie speak. She's a good-lookin' Sheila; friendly, too, although she doesn't talk all that much since we had to keep her in a secure facility." McKenna entered in his ID code and secured his sidearm in a small locker, before passing through another plastic door. "Hope you don't mind my sayin' so, her being your...well...maybe your missus." It was set up like a standard interrogation room, which Jack didn't love, but there were snacks aplenty laid out, which didn't hurt. 

Jack chuckled. "I mean, if a rip in the fabric of space-time had to give me a wife, I guess I'd rather she be good-looking and have a nice personality." 

" _I heard that, Carter,"_ came Jo's annoyed, disembodied voice over the intercom, which was nested behind a bank of closed-circuit cameras. 

McKenna snorted with laughter. "I like her," he observed, nodding towards the speaker, and crossed the room to disarm the security door that led to Fontana's secured quarters, or cell, depending on how one looked at it. Jack's heart was in his throat.

Fontana's arrival in the room was a blur. Jack barely got a glimpse at her face before she had crossed the room and thrown her arms around him. "Jack!" It was a cry of relief, of a wall finally breaking, of loneliness alleviated. Jack stood there, immobile, before awkwardly putting his hands around her back and looking back towards the security camera with a helpless expression. 

"You must be Dr. Fontana," he said, as warmly as he could, and she slowly peeled herself from him. She was pretty. Very, very pretty, with long red hair and tear-stained cheeks. 

"Please tell me this is a joke, sweetie," she pleaded, hands locked around his wrists. "Please tell me this is some insane stunt to get me to come back to Eureka because S.A.R.A.H. can't cook worth a damn and you don't like having my CAT up there sharing a mantelpiece with your World Series bat."

Jack's mouth turned dry, and he looked at the nearby table as though it were a life raft. "Let's try to sort some of this out, all right?" he offered, intending to retake a little command of the situation. Instead, it just sounded like a plea. "I'm not sure S.A.R.A.H. would ever tolerate having a cat running around the house, anyway."

Fontana froze, her eyes glued to Jack, and burst into tears anew. "Catadioptric imager," she wept. "First telescope I owned during grad school. It was the first thing I brought with me when I moved in." 

McKenna was busy trying to melt into the tent wall, hands shoved into his pockets and eyes glued to the floor. Whatever security or intelligence role he was supposed to be playing, he had clearly had no preparation for the sheer force of awkwardness and pain radiating from Fontana. 

"I think you have me at a disadvantage, Dr. Fontana," Jack said, sitting down across the table from her. "Maybe we can start from the beginning?"


	3. The Same, But Different

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack tries to debrief Dr. Fontana, but a mysterious attack on the Parkes Observatory disrupts everything.

“So we’ve never met, I’m in some kind of alternate universe, and I’m out of a job. If I didn’t know you better, Jack, I’d say you were playing some kind of very elaborate, very sick joke on me,” Fontana said, her cheeks an estuary of fresh and dried-up tears. “But this isn’t your idea of funny. It isn’t mine, either. Which leaves us with…” She trailed off.

Jack sat across from her, forcing himself not to take her hand, hug her, offer any sort of human comfort. Despite General Mansfield’s order to exploit her vulnerability and gather intel, Jack kept something of a respectful distance. He could feel Jo’s gaze on them, like the heat of an open oven door.

“How did we meet?” he asked Fontana.   
  


She sniffed, sitting up and putting her shoulders back. “Spun my car out on the Eureka access road. You thought I had wrecked the car, and it turned out it was the P-branes.”

“Pea-brains?” Jack asked, an eyebrow raised. 

“Subatomic thing. Typical Eureka.” She waved a hand at him. “Just ask your next question.”

“First date?” There was no operational utility to this. Jack was just curious, at this point. He suspected he wasn’t alone.

Fontana’s eyes were glistening. “We watched a meteor shower on the hood of your Jeep.” She looked away. “And for extra credit, our first kiss was in a Global Dynamics elevator. You were doing CPR on me while my lungs filled up with syn-water. “ 

McKenna coughed. “And what, exactly, might that be, ma’am?”

Jack glared at him, but looked to Fontana as well. “Synthetic water. Engineered at the molecular level to compress a large amount of H2O into a tiny container. Problem is, when you combine it with ionizing radiation, anyone drinking it-“ 

They didn’t hear the gunfire at first. They heard the shouting, the zipping of tent doors and clatter of booted feet. The sounds were distant, the radio squawks like echoes, but McKenna and Carter immediately knew. The Parkes Observatory was under attack.

Jo’s voice came through the intercom. “Jack! You need to get her out of there, we need to evacu-“ but she was cut off.

Jack wasn’t armed. It was a trip to a foreign country, and though the Aussies tolerated firearms on American military personnel, a mere civilian federal law enforcement officer apparently didn’t rate. McKenna, on the other hand, had somehow conjured a submachine gun from his cargo pants, and motioned Jack and Fontana to head for the door.

The first sound Jack noticed when he made it outside was the sound of bees. Angry ones. Hundreds, maybe thousands, all around. He looked up, instinctively covering his forearms. There were incidents from his childhood regarding insects. After a moment of looking around, there were no bees, he realized in the setting Australian sun. But there were certainly drones.

Black shoebox-sized quadcopters were zipping over the little tent city. Some were armed, with what looked like rifles slung beneath their rotors; others were unarmed, and focused on throwing themselves against the nearby helicopters. They seemed to be carrying explosive charges; Jack could see at least two of the Night Stalker helicopters burning on the grassy flightline.

One of the Blackhawks was still intact, and McKenna steered Fontana and Carter towards it. The flight crew had begun warming up the engines. “Go!” McKenna shouted, and dropped to a knee, covering behind a pile of equipment to fire towards one of the approaching drones. McKenna fired a three-round burst with his submachine gun, and the little black aircraft plowed into the top of a nearby tent, bouncing off the nylon material and crashing at Jack’s feet.

It had been rigged up with an AK-style rifle, connected to a servo that controlled the trigger. Extremely low-tech stuff, but effective. Jack tore the rifle loose from the bracket, pulled the charging handle back, and confirmed that the thing was still loaded. Jack pushed Fontana down, left palm between her shoulders, and hustled her towards the helicopter, dropping down to return fire against the nearby drones. McKenna leapfrogged, dropping back to protect Fontana as Jack fired.

“Jo!” he shouted, looking around. She was gone. So were Henry and Fargo. Another kamikaze drone blew up in mid-air, taken out just short of its intended target- which, Jack realized, must have been his Blackhawk.

McKenna grabbed Jack by his shirt, dragging him into the aircraft as the rotor wash began to kick up grass clippings around him. “Mate, she’ll be all right! We’re evacuating the asset to Lone Pine Barracks! We’ll figure it out from there, eh?” Jack could see Fontana clipping herself into the five-point harness on the helicopter, and the crew chief was already signaling the pilots to lift off.

“Asset? What in the hell are you…we can’t just leave them behind, dammit!”

McKenna ignored Jack, kneeling down beside him and firing two more bursts at the incoming swarm of drones. As the earth fell away beneath them, Jack could see a dust trail in the distance; small SUVs, unmarked, approaching Parkes at a high rate of speed. Jo was down there, and there was nothing he could do.


	4. Turbines and Rotors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Tess escape from the attack at the Parkes Telescope, and are faced with a choice.

It was a blur of aircraft. Jack had forced himself to focus on the individual legs of the journey, one over which he clearly had little to no control. There was an Australian SAS guy glued to their hip, aboard an American special operations helicopter, one whose rotors sounded distinctly muffled and whose fuselage was comprised of an odd, mottled material that didn’t hum like your average aircraft aluminum.

Jack pulled on a pair of headphones and signaled for McKenna to do the same. “We need to go back! My team- they’re still on the ground back there!”

McKenna shook his head. “No can do!” He signaled towards Tess. “I’ve got my orders- she’s the mission! Once she’s secure, we’ll back up your mates, and for the time being, whoever’s behind that attack’s got heaps of Diggers bearin’ down on them!” To reinforce his point, McKenna pointed out the window back towards the radiotelescope complex. More Night Stalker helicopters were arriving, some of which had begun firing rockets at the unmarked SUVs that were intruding into the complex.

Jack’s eyes were glued to the firefight, but the chaos was rapidly fading into the distance as their aircraft hugged the rolling countryside and hurtled east. He took off his headphones after a few moments, hanging them up where he had found them and sitting in the deafening silence with Tess.

They stopped at Lone Pine, a small Australian army base, to refuel. Tess had her legs pulled up against her chest for most of the flight, and Jack noticed that when they touched down, the engines kept running. McKenna hopped out of the aircraft onto the tarmac and fist-bumped the approaching fuel crew, but Jack couldn’t shake the notion that the SASR operator was establishing a perimeter, not just saying hello.

Jack’s feeling was further reinforced when they lifted off again, and he noticed two RAAF F-35 interceptors, top-of-the-line combat jets, flying behind them. Their Blackhawk helicopter had been hauling ass, but a top speed in the neighborhood of 180mph was still desperately slow for a jet fighter. _Christ_ , Jack thought. _Those F-35s are barely above stall speed_. The jets were risking falling out of the sky in order to stay close to them.

And then they were on the ground again, this time at a Royal Australian Air Force base. It reminded Jack a little bit of Camp Eureka from 1947; Quonset huts were still the order of the day, and the buildings were a little quainter than American military architecture. Jack could see the ocean off to the east. The sun was finally starting to set behind the mountains. It made about as much sense as anything else- time zones, gunfire, strange women from other dimensions who claimed to be his wife.

As the chopper set down on the runway of a nearby Australian air base, the fighters peeled off. Jack exhaled for a moment, and even Tess had let go of her knees for a moment. AK-wielding flying robots and haphazard explosions seemed an increasingly remote possibility.

McKenna ushered them out of the Blackhawk and across the runway to what looked like a military cargo plane, but it was…white. Strangely white, as though no one had quite decided on a final paint job, and so they’d just given up. A ring of guys in flannel shirts, beards, and Oakleys surrounded the plane and nodded to McKenna.

“This just keeps getting weirder,” Tess murmured to Jack as they approached the odd white plane, walking up the rear cargo ramp. A white guy with a short haircut and a polo shirt that read Gulf Air Group waited, David Clark headsets around his neck, alongside a South Asian woman in her early 40s, dressed as though she was going on a hiking trip.

“I’m Suni,” she said, shaking hands with Tess and Jack. “I work for the U.S. government. We got the call about the attack at the Parkes facility. We’re going to get you to a safe location in New Zealand. It should be about a four-hour flight.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, cracking a little grin. “I don’t get it. Why U.S. government? Why don’t you just say CIA? Like, if you’re not gonna be subtle about it…” He gestured to the white cargo plane behind them.

Suni was unflappable, smiling blankly at Jack. “Sheriff Carter. It must be so pleasant to police a town with an electromagnetic invisibility shield, where the sanitation guys have a Top Secret-SCI clearance. What a shame the rest of the world isn’t blessed with the same precautions you’re afforded in Eureka.”

Tess looked between the two of them, a slight smile appearing on her face at the sudden face-off, but she was silent for the moment.

“Dr. Fontana.” Suni refocused her attentions. “If you’d come with me, please. We’d like to get you to a safe facility in New Zealand, where we can figure out exactly how you got here, and maybe how to get you back.” She glanced at Jack. “Sheriff, we appreciate your work in keeping Dr. Fontana safe. If you’re inclined to go back to Parkes and look after the rest of the chess club, I’m sure we can take it from here.”

Jack gave Tess an awkward pat on the back. “Well,” he said. “This has been…insane. But I’ve got some people I love in the middle of a crazy robot attack back there, and I need to get back and help them.” Jack still carried the AK he had ripped off the drone.

“Right-o, mate,” McKenna said, and turned back towards the Blackhawk. “They’ll look after her from here. We’ve got some 7.62 ammo around here somewheres, we’ll get you squared away.”

“Wait.”

Jack and McKenna turned back. Tears were brimming in Tess’ eyes, but her voice was steady. The engines on the white cargo plane were already beginning to whine.

“I know those are your friends. More than just your friends, from the sound of that one woman’s voice. I know you want to go and help them, and…I get it.” Tess’ voice cracked, slightly. “But I have **no one**.

“Yesterday, I had a husband, and a house, and a German shepherd, all waiting for me back in Oregon. I had…” She paused, turned a brilliant shade of red, continued. “I had a life, and a career, and…things to look forward to.” She motioned to the scene on the tarmac, as the daylight faded around them.

“Now this is my life. I have no idea how I got here, no clue how- or if!\- I will ever get home, and the one person with a kind, familiar face, the one person whose presence gives me even the slightest sense of safety, the smallest glimmer of hope…he looks at me like a stranger.

“But that’s all I’ve got, Jack,” Tess said, hands shoved firmly into her pockets. “I know you’re not my Jack, and I know I’ve got no right to ask, but…” Fontana’s voice finally broke. “Please don't leave me.”


	5. Bagpipes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eureka's residents struggle with a tragedy and a mystery, each in their own way.

It had been three months since anyone had had contact with Jack Carter or the woman who called herself Tess Fontana. 

The Royal Australian Air Force had launched an investigation into the disappearance of the Gulf Air Group L-382 transport plane somewhere over the Tasman Sea. According to the flight logs, the aircraft was bound for a New Zealand Security Intelligence Service site outside of Manapouri. The aircraft reported no weather or mechanical problems. 

The leading theory had been a second attack by the mysterious forces which had attacked the Parkes Observatory, forcing Carter and Fontana to flee in the first place. If they could deploy armed drones and mercenaries, they could take down an unarmed contract cargo plane. But Coastguard New Zealand and the U.S. Navy had searched the aircraft’s projected flight path, not to mention a vast margin of error. They’d found no debris. Officially, it was an accident; the tragic but forgettable crash of a government-contracted cargo plane. 

The attackers at the Parkes telescope had disappeared as quickly as they had arrived. The unmarked SUVs which had fired on the scientific facility had been found burned to the chassis, a few hundred miles up the road. The drones, and the AK-style rifles they had wielded, were 3-D printed from commonly-available materials. There were no serial numbers on anything, from the receivers on the rifles, to the motherboards on the drones’ guidance systems.

Eureka had rolled into action. 

Allison and Nathan had cut their second honeymoon short and returned from Hawai’i. The two had established something of a command center in what used to be Allison’s office as the Director. She had moved into Fargo’s office as Deputy Director; Fargo had wisely kept his complaining to himself. 

The exhaustive military search for Jack Carter and the others was only the visible tip of a high-tech iceberg. Henry had begun a project to link all of the satellite data feeds covering the Tasman Sea on the day of the disappearance, from low earth orbit all the way up to geo-stationary and Lagrange points, to identify any interference or anomaly that could point to an answer. Nathan had begun hounding the gravitational observatories, beginning with Eureka’s own orbital gravitational wave detector and branching out to Italy, Louisiana, and a Sunday-morning trip up the road to Washington State. 

Allison tore through the medical fitness-for-duty files of everyone on the flight crew. After a few weeks, she had committed every flight physical, every psychological evaluation, every security clearance adjudication, to memory. They were highly-paid, former-military government contractors, who surrendered any scrap of privacy (down to their Facebook passwords and their cell phone lock codes) in service of their clearances and paychecks. They were, as the military guys put it, good to go. 

Zoe, in turn, had taken the semester off from Harvard and moved back into S.A.R.A.H., the smart house, spending her days parked at the impromptu command center at Global Dynamics. After hemming and hawing from General Mansfield, GD had agreed to designate Zoe as a student intern, both to cushion the blow to her academics and to grant her the requisite security clearances needed for access to the highly-classified methods they were using to find her father. 

General Mansfield began to visit the base with increasing frequency, exhibiting less and less concern for the well-being of the staff and an increasingly vocal interest in Eureka’s capacity to get back to work. Mansfield began to make very clear allusions to the fact that Fontana had been a security risk, that Carter had been a security professional who knew the risks, and that Eureka’s intellectual capital would be better spent on tackling the problems of the future rather than mourning the tragedies of the past. After a few days of this, everyone agreed; Mansfield was an asshole. 

But asshole or not, Mansfield had pull. And so after a few weeks of impromptu inspections, the command center- and by inference, its status as an official project- transitioned over to the basement at the Stark household. And so did Zoe, and her semi-official internship, and Zane, eventually, after it became very clear that the risk of Jo seeing the two of them together was a much less significant problem than it had been before.

Jo, for her part, had continued to show up to work. She had begun to eschew fitted dark pantsuits in favor of the more tactical look, which afforded her the sartorial flexibility to wear 5.11 gear with flexible waistlines. The fact of her pregnancy was not yet out, nor did she plan for it to be until it was absolutely necessary. The identity of the father could wait until hell froze over, as far as she was concerned. 

It all came to a head on an unusually cool August day, when the United States Marshals Service decided to come to town. After four full months of Sheriff Carter and the flight crew being declared missing, they had declared him lost and presumed dead, as with any federal officer who disappeared under such circumstances. And since the Defense Department’s transfer of Carter from the Marshals had been entirely classified, he was, technically, still on the books as a deputy United States Marshal, and entitled to the honors that came with a line-of-duty-death. 

And so it came to pass that Eureka’s efforts to find Sheriff Carter, and the woman who called herself Tess Fontana, and the rest of the flight crew, were put on hold for that chilly August day. No one would acknowledge why, because it was classified, and no one would admit defeat, because no concrete evidence of defeat had washed up on any shore. But a dozen Marshals, clad in full Scottish garb, beating snare drums and blowing bagpipes, trod down Archimedes Avenue, playing Amazing Grace. 

Nathan, and Allison, and Kevin, and Henry, and Grace, and Callie from the dry cleaner’s, and Fargo, and Julia, and Vincent, and Zane, and Zoe, stood with their hands over their hearts, never fully accepting the reality of Jack’s departure, but acknowledging the necessity of acknowledging his loss. The bagpipes echoed around Main Street, and everyone knew just what the federal agents in kilts signified. Eureka, at least in a bureaucratic sense, was saying goodbye to Sheriff Jack Carter. 

One of the deputies approached Zoe at the end of the procession. There was no graveside memorial, no body to bury, and no official pronouncement, just a group of feds from across the country who wore plumed hats and kilts when they weren’t wearing suits or body armor. He knelt down and handed her a carefully-folded flag, but as if to acknowledge the ambiguity and confusion of the whole thing, he said nothing. The Marshals were seen in Vincent’s not too long after, quietly drinking beers and having an early dinner before returning to their hotel. 

Jo wasn’t there. Jo sat in a dark blue Chevrolet Suburban with U.S. government plates, within sight of the procession, and wept bitterly, before drying her eyes, gritting her teeth, and driving to her scheduled OB-GYN appointment on the outskirts of town.


End file.
